


A Game of Consequences

by donotspeaktomeofdragonfire



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Angst, Clones, Emotional Manipulation, Flux Buddies versus Magic Police, Forgiveness, Gen, Lalnable Hector (mentioned), Memory Loss, Shadow of Israphel, Timeline Fixing, Worldbuilding, Yoglabs, episode rewrite, mentions of abuse, this got out of hand
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 18:52:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3179375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donotspeaktomeofdragonfire/pseuds/donotspeaktomeofdragonfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I'm going to be honest with you- this probably isn't going to get finished. I was trying to articulate my theories, but it turned out to not be the medium it needed to be. I'm just not prepared for something as long as this wants to be.<br/>---<br/>Action: Making independent decisions.<br/>Consequences: Having to face the fact that your memories might not be your own, as well as the hidden conspiracy behind everything you thought you knew, and the discovery that those who came before you made decisions they believed were right- and faced consequences of their own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Magic Police versus Flux Buddies

**Author's Note:**

> To understand the first two chapters, you'd need to have watched Magic Police vs Flux Buddies, as well as the sequel, Flux Buddies vs Magic Police.  
> To understand the rest, you'd need to have seen the Shadow of Israphel series, and possibly also have a vague idea of Duncan's Lab and the various series done by the Yogscast. Believe me, I did my homework. Not my actual homework, though.

Clones were honestly a bad idea. Even worse than nukes or the nagas (nagii?). It seemed so simple, to hide his identities from each other, to play multiple parts. One with Xephos and Honeydew at Holediggers, one with Sjin in the Magic Police, one with Nanosounds at Pandalabs. Each separate, hidden, secret. It was convenient, as he could continue his work at Yoglabs uninterrupted, only checking up on them on the monitors every once in a while. Lalna watched as Xephos, followed by an overeager Honeydew clone, strode past his office, talking at a million miles an hour. Xephos loved having his own personal Honeydew clone, he said it was rather like “talking to a rubber duck,” a metaphor frequently used by programmers- talking an idea out loud to a neutral party often helps with finding the errors in an idea. Before Yoglabs, Lalna would have called it rude, referring to a clone as if they were less than human, but he had grown so used to having his own that it seemed the natural order to him now: one body, many disposable heads. Like a hydra. Cut one off and they could grow another two in their place. Unfortunately, with the situation Lalna had put them in, his clones would be even more difficult to replace, time and money down the drain to retrieve, copy, and alter their specific memories. 

He envied the clones, almost, while they worked out there in the fresh air, talking and laughing with what should have been  his friends, able to work on all the technological or magical projects they wanted to, while he sat here, deconstructing logistical puzzles and pumping out ideas like a computer. He deserved a break.

A loud beeping noise shook him out of his thoughts. Frantic, he switched his screen over to the clones’ feeds, staring in disbelief. The Magic Police were at Pandalabs, snooping around at the magic that Nano had been doing. Really, he should refer to her with her full formal name, as would be proper, but he had taken to calling her Nano in his head. He felt that it would be more personal, for someone he felt he had known for so long. What could he do? Two clones in the same place- there was protocol for this, it was his job to report it, but should he call it this early? Maybe Nano could scare them off before they found each other. She was screaming bloody murder as they trashed her small hut. Lalna couldn’t help but feel a pang of remorse- the Pandalabs clone had spent so long building her a space for herself.

“Duncan!” she screeched. The clones used colloquial names, but Xephos insisted on formal address in Yoglabs. (“We’re better than them, Lalna. Never forget that. They aren’t even human.”) “Duncan, what are you doing? What’s going on? You  hate Sjin!”

Lalna’s hand hovered over the alarm. One touch and he could stop it all, he should, she was revealing information that could be used to connect the clones to each other. This was a massive security breach, and any way it went it would end badly for himself, the clones, even Sjin and Nano would have to be sedated and brought under the care of Yoglabs. Maybe Xephos would replace them with clones, or simply alter their memories- it was a long and painful process either way. He should stop this now, before it went too far.

Or he could watch. Scientific curiosity was tugging harder than it ever had before. Xephos may have the puppet strings of his body and actions, but only he could control his mind, Lalna told himself. It was his own decision. Lalna looked again at the problems and tasks set before him. Perhaps it would not be long until Yoglabs had everything.

“Is that a voodoo doll?” Sjin’s voice was tinny through the hidden speakers. There was a panic, a scuffle as three voices were shouting at once. Nano tried, twice, three times to affect some sort of damage to Sjin, but his head stayed firmly on his body. She fled, and Lalna let out a breath. Hopefully they would give up, would think nothing of Nano’s words about Duncan, and move on to some other perceived enemy.

But to his dismay, they continued into the main Pandalabs building, shouting about this or that found. There was a moment of radio silence when Sjin discovered their plans to nuke, not only Hat Films (and Hat Films’ Demise), but his own farm as well. Sjin, unlike Duncan, was quite open about who he worked with and where.

Panicking, Lalna checked the cameras, praying to whatever god ruled this place that the other Duncan wasn’t home, had taken a trip to the Twilight Dimension or gone off to fetch ingredients. There may still be hope yet. 

But no, two separate cameras showed him his worst nightmare- he should have triggered the alarm, no matter what the cost was at the time. He had gambled his friends’ lives, and now they would all pay the price. Was it worth it, even now, though? Would it make it any worse to let them see each other, whatever would come? There were so many strange incidents in their world, especially with the magic users in plentiful supply.

With a knuckle between his teeth and his eyes glued to the screen, Lalna watched as the other Duncans surveyed each other. 

“What the  hell? ”

“What the  hell? ”

Screams pierced his ears as four voices cried out in confusion and anger. Startlingly, the Duncans seemed the calmest of the group, and Sjin was almost laughing, though it was hysterical laughter. Perhaps he was right, and they had simply seen so much in their time that nothing could truly surprise them anymore.

“I don’t know which Duncan to save!” Nanosounds, on the other hand, was in near tears as threats and  spells were thrown across the room. 

It was chaos, truly, and the Magic Police Duncan finally cried out  “Send him to Azkaban!”

There was a bang, and the room went silent for a moment, until Nano went bezerk.

“Bring him back! You bring him back right now or I’ll shoot!” It was the kind of voice that spoke in all capital letters, and Lalna scrambled for the volume adjuster. Would the clones kill each other off? It seemed like it, or rather, Nano would kill one and Sjin would kill the other. Lalna briefly wondered if this counted as an answer to the age-old thought experiment.

But neither Duncan was dead, and apparently he was the only one monitoring his clones, as no one had stepped in to interfere yet. Duncan and Sjin were flying off on their air sleds, with Nano hot on their heels.

As they flew off, they laughed and turned their minds and conversations to other things, which let Lalna breathe easy for a few minutes. Nano remained in the house, flipping through books and chests in an attempt to figure out what went wrong. She was muttering ominously, and Lalna let a little bit of what hope he had left spread to her. She was precious to him, in the way that a favorite doll would be. It’s not that he had feelings for her, but he certainly didn’t want to see her destroyed. The experiments were bad enough.

Mentions of Azkaban drew Lalna’s attention away from Nano’s screen and back to the Magic Police. 

“Is he here? Let’s have a look.”

They congratulated themselves on fantastic police work, then began to heckle their prisoner.

“In the name of science, let me out!”

Of course, this clone had the memories of the restless scientist from the previous world, the one that had been ripped apart by the Nagas. After the unfortunate event, Xephos was, as would be expected, absolutely livid. He insisted that it was Lalna’s job to watch his own clones, especially as they were the last ones left in the area. Lalna had objected- it wasn’t his job to watch Honeydew, after all, and he certainly had no influence over what the populace did with the powers bestowed upon them. That, he had reminded Xephos, was a rule- no interference.

Regardless of how good Lalna’s argument was, it was no excuse for what Xephos had deemed “back-talk.” He learned quickly that he had to keep his mouth shut and his back straight around Xephos. Though Lalna himself, in his original brain, had been deemed “too precious” to be hurt, it was still torture to watch Xephos take out his anger on a “Duncan” clone. The clone, after multiple harrowing visits, was dubbed “Lalnable Hector,” a bastardization of Lalna’s own formal name, and was given as a gift to the psychiatric testing department. He rarely spoke to Xephos after that, if he could help it.

“Why do you look like me?”

“I don’t,  you look like  me. ”

“You’re both wrong,” Lalna sighed, as if they could hear him. “You look like me.”

The Duncan trapped in the tiny, cramped cell in the centre of Azkaban, was putting up a hell of a fight. He lashed out at his captors, demanding his release.

“We’ll leave him there,” Sjin decided. “He’s too dangerous to be reasoning with.”

“Kim will save me!“ He sounded confident in his words, and Lalna hoped that Nano was as good as Duncan thought she was.


	2. Flux Buddies versus Magic Police

“I need to find Duncan! Actual Duncan, real Duncan, fake Duncan, I don’t know, I need to find Duncan!” Lalna could hear the quiver in Nanosounds’ voice as she ran dover her mental recap of what had happened that evening. 

“Alright, so I’m gonna head down to Sjin’s Farm, and figure out what the hell is going on with Double-Duncan, ‘cause that is just weird, it’s just- it’s just not groovy!”

Landing in front of the farmhouse, Nano darted inside, and promptly back out through the back door.

“Well, this is certainly not in keeping with this farm’s aesthetic!”

She was clever, cleverer than Lalna had given her credit for. Working quickly, she found the way through in record time. 

“Okay, well, do or die I guess,” she told herself as she hopped through the portal. “I’m coming for ya Dunc!”

Lalna felt a bit sorry for himself, in this moment. He- or, rather, his clone, was the damsel in distress in this scenario. Shouldn’t he be the one doing the rescuing, not this small woman, the victim of an unfortunate experiment? But she was powerful despite her stature, and with a bazooka in her hand, who would stop her?

She had, apparently, taken a breather from the rescuing business, stopping instead to admire the various statues of the world’s magic-users, as well as to change her own legal records.

“Far too awesome for the likes of stupid Magic Police!” She laughed with confidence, finally moving to search the place for her Duncan.

Her Duncan. He quite liked the sound of that. To belong to someone other than this damned laboratory.

“What the heck is that?” Nano breathed, facing the monolithic Azkaban. 

“Okay, so I’m guessing Duncan’s definitely in here.”

“Kim?” 

“Duncan? Duncan!” Her voice filled with joy and relief. Nano was a treasure, truly- to make someone feel so loved and needed.

“Kim, help!” Duncan squeaked. “I’m trapped!”

Even before the rescue, they didn’t seem on edge. Lalna gnawed on his lip as he listened to their easy laughter. 

“Kim, I knew you’d come for me. Kim, get me out of here!” He felt almost cheated, that a mere  clone could use names so freely. What gave him the right to call her that? Why couldn’t Lalna use his own colloquial name? He hadn’t dared ask Xephos. It wouldn’t be right, he thought, no, Xephos would say it was an improper question.

On the screen, the two jabbered away as they usually did, now attempting to use portals to release Duncan from his bedrock cell. Apart from a bit of light questioning, neither team seemed to end up all that concerned about the incident. Lalna breathed a little easier, knowing now that his decision against the alarm had been the right one in the end. As long as it didn’t affect anything in a major way in the future, they were all safe from harm.

“Yeah, he was all like “why do you look like me?” and I was all like “why do you look like  me ?” and…”

It seemed as if everything would blow over quickly. Sitting up, Lalna cracked his back and stretched. He’d been watching the screen for a good while, and no doubt Xephos would notice the lack of work. It was no crime, he’d say, to be keeping an eye on his clones. Making sure they didn’t blow themselves up again. “You know how they are,” he’d laugh, hands clasped behind his back and head bowed deferently as they walked side-by-side. “They think that life is so disposable.”

“But it is,” Xephos would answer. “For them. You must remember that, Lalna. Remember what we’ve talked about.”

“I want to play with the train, Kim! It’s the only piece of tech they’ve got in this forsaken place,” Duncan whined, and Lalna allowed himself a hint of a smile. He-  it \- took after the original the most, he believed. This one, as well as the one at Holediggers, Inc., had older memories. While this one had lived at his castle-turned-laboratory, the Holediggers Duncan had stayed at the side of Xephos’ own clone, and what Lalna had come to believe was not, in fact, the original Honeydew. Yoglabs had been formed out of the ashes of the first world, like a phoenix rising in the sun, and it had taken everyone with it. “It was all for the best, of course,” Xephos would tell him. All for the best.

“Did you miss me?”

“No.”

“I missed you a lot.” The clone swept Nano up into a hug. Lalna couldn’t remember the last time someone had hugged him.

They went home, after a long while, and Duncan seemed overjoyed to have returned. It was odd, after all, he had only been gone a little while- right? How long had he really spent watching these little dolls run around?

“D’you know what, Duncan? I’m just gonna take the rest of the day off. I’m gonna sit on this platform,” Nano declared, “and watch the sinking sun because honestly, what a day.”

“I’ll join you.” They sat there, on the end of the ice platform that had been hastily constructed on the cliff in front of the Pandalabs, talking and laughing for what would probably be hours more. They seemed to trust each other so implicitly here, know that their partners, whoever they were paired up with, would always get them out of their disasters. Lalna turned back to his work, hoping that if he worked quickly enough he could get caught up before the evening meal. It had been an eventful day, and Xephos had trusted him with making his own decisions. Now he had to trust himself that he had made the right one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short chapters and any sense of sanity end here


	3. Who Watches the Watchers?

There was a sharp knock at the door, and Lalna jumped. Thinking quickly, he hit mute on the screen. It wouldn’t be proper to have the clone’s voices talking over their own.

“Lalna? Are you all right?” Xephos’ concerned voice came over the intercom. As the room was soundproof, they had a speaker near the door that aided communication.

“Yes, sir,” Lalna stood, brushing himself off and making sure he looked presentable. “I’m here.”

He opened the door and inclined his head in respect. Xephos loomed in the doorway, elegant as usual. His hair was perfectly styled, not a hair out of place, and his coat flowed gently down to his knees. Lalna’s eyes travelled all the way down to his boots, polished to a shine, then snapped back up to Xephos’ piercingly blue eyes, focused entirely on him. He was painfully reminded of his own state of dress, as he was still in his old lab coat and trainers.

“Will you walk with me?” Xephos stepped back, into the hall, knowing Lalna would follow, and he did. They ventured out into the corridor. Lalna watched the coloured lines on the floor turn off down different paths.

“Lalna.” Xephos’ voice was soft, and Lalna tried to meet his eyes. “I need to be able to trust you. You do realize that? But I can’t trust you if you don’t trust me. Do you trust me?” Though he had to be careful with his words, Xephos was really the only one here he could go to. He trusted Xephos as much as the clones trusted their partners. He had to.

“Of course.” His eyes inched up Xephos’ face, landing directly to the right of his target.

They stopped, but Lalna did not dare to look away. Mechanical sounds emanated from the rooms around them. Xephos twitched forwards, as if he wanted to reach out to Lalna- maybe to attack, perhaps simply to touch.

“You must remember,” Xephos began. It was one of his favorite phrases. “You must remember that we are only here to help you. We are- I am- here for you. For the good of the world. We watch. We listen. We guide and guard. But it is not just the clones, or the experiments, that we do this for. There is a world that is more real than you know. I have seen it. I knew it. I knew those who inhabited it. I did!” He shook, fists clenched tight enough to make his knuckles go white, his composure dropping in a rare display of raw emotion, but Xephos was practiced enough to quickly slip a mask back on. “I need to show you this because I need- you need to trust me. And you deserve to know.” Xephos turned to the large metal doors in front of them, and pulled a gadget out of his pocket. It wasn’t one Lalna had worked on, at least as far as he knew. He placed the device firmly on the doors, pressed a few buttons, and stood back. They slid open with a familiar thud, and Lalna followed him inside, hands behind his back. His shoulders were curled in in unease, and Xephos glanced back at him, eyes large. “Don’t cringe! Look!”

He threw his arms wide, head raised, as an artist displaying his creation, and Lalna looked, and saw.

The walls of the room were filled, higher and further than he could see, with glass casings, stacked up against each other, head-to-toe, with barely any room between them. They glinted in the artificial light. In the centre of the room, a few cases stood alone, fogged enough so that he could not see inside.

“What is it?”

“What is it? What is it?” Xephos repeated, laughing. Rather than answering, he walked to one of the nearest cases by the door, and wiped the glass with his sleeve. Lalna approached cautiously and peered inside at Xephos’ urging.

It was not just a case after all. It was a frozen coffin. Inside, a face stared back at him, wrinkled with age, with laughter lines creasing its eyes. But the face, belonging to an elderly male, was not laughing now. It was frozen in fear, one hand pressed up against the glass like he had spent his last moments trying to escape.

“It’s not on the records. Or it is, but even I can’t reach them.” Xephos spoke from behind him. His voice was familiar, low, an even, comforting tone.“Every one is a face I knew, the faces that haunt my dreams. I knew them. I knew them. I knew them.” Turning, Lalna saw Xephos fall hard on his knees, wincing. “It was a beautiful disaster. The only way to stop the sands was ice. I remember. I was there. I knew.” He breathed so heavily Lalna worried he might pass out.

Lalna spoke. “Friend.” The word used so often by the clones. “Friend.” He stepped closer. “I understand. We do what we have to.”

“You don’t!” Xephos screamed. The words ripped out of his throat. It was clear that he was done with his carefully put-together persona, and it sounded as if he had needed to scream for a long time. Even when he was punishing Lalna, he never raised his voice. Tentatively, Lalna stretched out his hand to help him up. He would, for Xephos’ benefit, forget this incident. Everyone snapped sometime, and it would be improper to judge his character by a singular incident. Perhaps he simply needed to go to the psychiatric ward for a while. There was no shame in needing help.

The beautiful figure was crouched like an animal, and he stared at Lalna’s hand as if he was unused to such affection. But he ignored the gesture and scrambled to his feet. “You have to see,” he panted. “You have to know.”

He stumbled across the floor to the isolated chambers, and Lalna followed at his heels. He was worried that Xephos might  fall again. The coffins were gruesome, all right, but it was likely just another of Yoglabs’ demented experiments.

Xephos stopped at the first one, staring up at it and placing his hand on the glass. Those in the middle were on slightly raised platforms, as if they were more important than the rest. “Oh, my friend,” he wailed. “Did I do this to you? Why can’t I remember? Is it your blood on my hands?”

Lalna gaped. Sealed away in this chamber was a familiar face. The red-headed dwarf still wore his helmet, but unlike the one he had viewed along the wall, Honeydew smiled, with kind eyes and a set jaw. He seemed as if he were posing for a statue to be made, a hero ‘till the end.

“Who’s in the others?” he asked. Xephos was sobbing on the floor now, one hand stretched out to touch the glass.

“I don’t know,” he managed. “I only went this far. Oh god, do I even want to know? I wish I had never found this place!” He returned his head to the floor, and Lalna saw that he would get no more out of him, and so moved on.

The next case was fogged over as well. As a mental experiment, Lalna reviewed the laws of condensation that would explain why every single one was cloudy on the outside only. Stepping up to it, he grabbed his sleeve and wiped all the way down, revealing the sorry soul underneath.

Lalna gasped, stumbling back. Because the face inside was calm, eyes closed, as if he was sleeping. High cheekbones and pointed ears formed a defined, unmistakable profile, through the clothing was different. This one- he couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge the name, although his brain had already made the helpful connection- this one wore what looked like a pantsuit. He observed that it was formed of a stiff collar, a stripe of black across the shoulders, and the main body of the shirt was a bright red. There was an insignia, like a pin, on the man’s left chest.

Lalna glanced over at Xephos, the one he knew. It was a very different style from the dashing look Xephos wore now. It had been a bad idea, moving on. They should have left well enough alone. They were used to seeing clones everywhere, but this was different, he could tell. Xephos’ reaction to Honeydew’s body, the fact that there were clearances for things even Xephos couldn’t get to, all pointed to a conspiracy far greater than they had thought. Sure, there were shady dealings at Yoglabs, and everything was a secret from everyone else. But Lalna was beginning to understand that even Xephos, the supposed leader of the laboratory, didn’t know everything.

He moved on, not because he wanted to, but because he had to. Had to see what- or rather, who- was waiting in the rest of them.

The next one- Lomadia. So it wasn’t just those at the labs. Was it everyone? She was steely-eyed, prepared. Each one had looked like they were resigned to their fate.

The right thing to do.

The next one finally broke Lalna. He had tried, up until that point, to remind himself of what was proper, to stay inside his neat little boxed mind. But at the sight before him, his mind ran away, extrapolating undesirable conclusions from unwanted data, spinning inferences outwards in spirograms.

He was there. He was there, a smirk on his face, ever-present goggles perched on his head, lab coat buttoned up neatly rather than the casual way he wore it now. Lalna stared down the row at the number of cases that remained, stretching off into the distance.

Who locked them all in?

The right thing to do.

Sips. Sjin in a ridiculous-looking loincloth. They were side-by-side in the lineup, as they always were in life. Rythian wore a green and gold robe that covered his head, and a scarf that covered his face, different from the one he wore now. Did he remember them like that? Was it he who remembered a tiny town with big dreams, close friendships, rivalries, flight and fire and death- or did those memories belong to the man who wore his clothes, looking out upon nothing but row upon row of those he thought he once knew, locked away here- why?

The right thing.

He realized, as he moved on to the next, that Xephos had stopped sobbing. Lalna turned back.

“Xephos?”

Xephos was standing perfectly still, facing the second case. His breathing was even as he turned to Lalna.

“I can’t remember.”

“What, friend?”

“I remember waking up next to Honeydew. I called him Simon then. I remember being a hero. I remember our first town, the house I built. But I don’t remember anything in-between.”

“You said that’s when Yoglabs was made. To… to keep us safe.”

“I said that.” His eyes never strayed from his doppelganger. “I said that. But do I believe it?” He chuckled. “Nothing makes sense in my head anymore. I can’t tell what memories are mine, and what are his.”

“His? Wouldn’t all the memories be ours?”

Xephos finally turned to Lalna. “What’s the furthest back you can remember?”

He took a few moments to think. Starting from one memory, he reached and pulled himself along. The Jaffa Factory. But that was a clone, one he’d watched perform his life for him. Further. The fight with Sjin that ended in flames. Further. Touring his friends’ factories, homes, towers. Further. Building his own first workshop. He reached out for a handhold, to pull himself back. Further.

But there was no further.

“The ‘Tekkit’ town,” he replied, an answer to Xephos’ question at least.

Xephos looked at him with sad eyes. “I can remember further back, but it stops, after a while. It’s more like a story than a memory.”

“So… what happened?”

“I think only they know. Are you down there?”

“Yes, and Lomadia, and Sips and Sjin and Rythian. Everyone, I think.”

“But if everyone is here, then how far back do those out there remember?”

“I don’t know. Wouldn’t they have left a record, of sorts? Emergency protocol?”

“Emergency protocol is probably to kill us.”

“You’d never know unless we looked.”

Xephos gestured behind him. “There’s a window there, and a room I don’t recognize. We could try to break in.”

There was, in fact, a very large window, facing the first two cases. The room it looked into was piled high with file cabinets, as neatly stacked as the bodies out here.

“We could try. What’s that thing you had in your pocket?”

He pulled it out. It was a sleek and elegant looking silver disk, with a few buttons and an output screen. “It might work,” he confessed. Placing it against the screen, Xephos pressed one, then another, and the device beeped. He stepped back and turned his back to it, ducking, and Lalna did the same. A sound came from behind them, like the glass was giving in, making deep groaning noises. There was a crack, as heart-stopping as stepping on seemingly solid ice and hearing it reverberate through the entire area, and it shattered, some pieces hitting their backs. Lalna turned back to see the floor covered in shards of glass, and was thankful for his thick boots as they made their way across, stepping carefully into the room. It was dark, though the artificial light from the room of bodies illuminated it enough.

He decided to try one of the file cabinets, and to his surprise, it opened easy enough. It wasn’t even locked. “P-Q”, the front read, in careful handwriting. Whoever had organized the files was meticulous about it, as there seemed to be several folders in this cabinet alone, and pages upon pages in each folder. He closed it and looked for the “A”s. They were down in a corner of the room, and dust piled up against it. This one opened with a bit more difficulty. Pulling one folder out, he read the label out loud.

“Antioch Family, see also Peculier.”

Xephos froze in his own explorations. “I knew the names sounded familiar,” he breathed. “Oh my god.”

Xephos took off across the room and slammed into a cabinet on the opposite corner from where Lalna was standing. “X through Z,” he muttered, sliding down the stack. “X for- here.” He pulled the drawer open with some force, and thumbed through its contents, selecting one and holding it up. “X for Xephos, also Lewis.”

“So the files are on the people in here?”

“It’s so much more than that. It’s so much more.” Xephos pulled a journal out of the thick file. The journal looked ancient, leather-bound and cracked, and Xephos ran his hands gingerly across it, sitting down on the dusty floor to read it. Lalna joined him, not caring about the state of his clothing any longer. He was far too curious. When Xephos opened it, he had to brush sand out from between the pages.

“Day one, stardate unknown,” Xephos began.

“I seem to be the sole survivor of the starship’s crash. The air here is thick, and it makes it hard to remember at times, so I must keep a journal to remind myself. If I forget the life I left behind, I might never have the chance to make it home. My starship was the U.S.S. Enterprise, our mission, our last mission, to explore a routine spacial anomaly. Our captain was Captain Picard no, I’m confusing life with legend again. Honeydew, the self-proclaimed dwarf who rescued me from the ice, tells me that I claimed I was William Riker when I first arrived. Of course, that was only a feverish fantasy. My name, as I informed him, is Lewis, though he attempted to call me Xephos for some time, insisting that we “didn’t know each other well enough yet.” When I enquired as to whether Xephos was his word for newcomer, he laughed, and called me friend. We have made a rudimentary shelter for the night, away from the creatures that inhabit this world. There are “monsters” here which are silent until they are near their “prey”, then explode with such force that they damage the ground around them. What the point could be of such a brutal killing machine of an animal, I don’t know.”

Xephos flipped through the pages, throwing out bits of information as he passed the days. “Today we built a house in a cave, today Honeydew- Simon- lit the floor on fire, I’m building a tower…”

“Lit the floor on fire?” Lalna laughed, and it felt like he hadn’t laughed in a long while. He was shaking, but maintained a respectful distance from Xephos. The man never liked physical affection.

“Keeping the house warm for me,” Xephos explained, trying to laugh as well, but it fell flat. “Or him. This doesn’t cover anything before my memories start.”

“Well, I don’t know your memories. Maybe I could help if you tell them to me.”

“Be my rubber duck?” Now they were really laughing. It felt good to laugh, even in the fear that surrounded them. “All right, it’s storytime. Let me tell you of the legends of the heroes of old.”

Xephos read from the book, and added his own memories of the days when a great evil threatened their land, a romping adventure with sky pirates and flourishing cities, of daring escapes and forbidden romance, women and knights and the undead. Lalna hung on every word, every name, as the brave adventurers ran up the stairs and escaped the “evil” clones into the sand wastes, as they found an oasis in the middle of the desert, even restored an ecosystem. And as they were escaping, various companions in tow, on their way to defeat Israphel once and for all, Xephos stopped. He stopped mid-sentence, almost as if he had expected there to be something there, when there wasn’t. The noise he made instead sounded like the feeling when you think there’s one more stair than there is.

“Go on, “ Lalna urged. “It’s amazing!”

“There isn’t any more in my head.” Xephos took a long, shaky breath. “But the book goes on. I don’t know what happens next.”

“Read it, please, Xephos.” They were sitting cross-legged in front of each other, staring each other down.

“I’m not sure I want to know. Everything I’ve done, god, everything I’ve said to you, the man who wrote this wouldn’t say those things at all. The man who saved the day, the grand hero, he’s in there,” Xephos gestured back through the window they had come through, “and I’m just me, here, pretending to be him. I can’t live with that.” He was shaking like a leaf in the wind, and Lalna made a decision. He leaned forward and lightly placed his hand on Xephos’ knee. It was the first time he had touched the man, and the touch was meant to be a comforting one.

“I know. I know the things you’ve said, and what you’ve done. And no, I don’t think you could ever be him. Because you’re not him.” Xephos was sobbing, though no tears came out. Apparently he had used all his tears on Honeydew. “I don’t know if you can forgive yourself for everything. I don’t even know if I can forgive you. And I certainly can’t forget. You got into my head. But seeing you here, like this- it lets me know that you were trying. We’re all trying, with what we were given to work with. And if you don’t want to know, well, I don’t think we have a choice anymore. We’ve come this far, we can’t just close the door and put our hands over our ears and forget what we’ve seen. I think,” Lalna took slow breaths, guiding Xephos to match his own. “I think we have to know. We have to keep reading, and we have to learn, and we have to change.”

Xephos looked at Lalna, looked into him with those blue eyes that seemed to glow, and they sat in silence for a while, connected by the one point of contact. Finally, Xephos lifted Lalna’s hand from his knee, and squeezed it lightly, turning it over and pressing their palms together.

“I’ll keep reading,” he resigned.


End file.
